Lola’s Kitchen: Lasagna Recipe

Posted February 26, 2016 by Lola in Lola's Kitchen / 18 Comments

Lola’s Kitchen is a feature on Lola’s Reviews where I talk about all things related to food, cooking and baking. These posts can be recipe posts, tens list posts about food or recipes or more discussion type posts about food. I love cooking and spend some time in the kitchen almost every day, so I wanted to give it a place on my blog as well. The banner for this feature is designed by Michelle from Limabean Designs.

Even though I used to dislike pasta when I was younger I did always like lasagna and was always happy when my mom made it. Once I lived on my own i was determined to learn how to make it myself, but it took me years to master this recipe. It failed horribly bad the first few times I tried it, first the sauce wasn’t good then I had way too little sauce, then tried a recipe that wasn’t fully to my taste and eventually I finally found a good way to make it. I use my Tomato Sauce Recipe for the sauce and make the lasagna with that. Lasagna can take a while to prepare, but it’s so worth it.
Lasagna close-up

Ingredients

Lasagna ingredients

  • Red Bell pepper – 3
  • Lasagna noodles – 12
  • Tomatoes – 3
  • Onion – 1
  • Meat or vegetable meat substitution (optional)
  • Other veggies like campignon, corn, peas etc (optional)
  • Olive Oil
  • Garlic – 5 cloves
  • Parsley and Basil (optional)
  • Tomato Paste – 2 tablespoons
  • Low salt vegetable bouillon cube – 2
  • Sambal – 1 teaspoon
  • Water – 1 cup
  • Cornstarch
  • Oregano (optional)
  • Cheese (optional)

This recipe feeds about four people.

Method

  1. Cut the onion, red bell pepper, tomatoes and garlic in pieces. Put the garlic and onion in a wok or pan and bake it until the onion is translucent.
  2. Now add the red bell pepper and bake for a few minutes. Then add the tomatoes and the tomato paste.
  3. Mix the bouillon cubes in one cup water and add to the sauce. Add any other vegetables or meat you want to add to the sauce now. Add some parsley and basil (Optional).
  4. Add the sambal and some cornstarch mixed into water to make the sauce a bit thicker. Let the sauce cook for a bit longer.
  5. Once the sauce is almost done, preheat the oven on 180 degrees celcius/ degrees fahrenheit. In a big ovenproof bowl scoop a few spoons of sauce, enough to cover the bottom of the bowl. Then layer some lasagna noodles on top to cover the sauce, then add another layer of sauce and repeat till the sauce is gone or your bowl is filled with lasagna. Try to end with sauce. On top you can add some cheese (optional). Then put it for about 15-20 minutes in the oven.
  6. Once the lasagna is doen, remove the bowl from the oven and put it on plates. Enjoy!

Pictures

Onion and garlic

red bell pepper with tomato

onion with red bell pepper

Add puree, bouillon cube and sambal

Sauce

Sauce final

Layer Tomato Sauce

layer bechamel sauce and cheese

Layer lasagna

Lasagna before oven

Lasagna done

Variation Tips

  • Vary with veggies, meat and spices. Instead of only red bell pepper, tomatoes and onion you can add other veggies as well, like peas, beans, champignons, lentils or corn. Or even spinach, pumpkin or beet if you’re feeling adventurous.
  • Lasagna with Béchamel sauce. Make Béchamel sauce from 50 gram/ 3 1/2 tablespoon butter, 60 gram/ 1/2 cup flour and 600 ml/ 2 1/2 cup milk. You prepare the sauce when the tomato sauce is almost ready by slowly metling butter in a pan, once the butter is molten add the flour and stir till combined, then slowly add the milk. Let it cook until it’s a bit thicker. After a layer of tomato sauce add a layer of Béchamel sauce before adding the lasagna noodles. Béchamel sauce recipe is based on Uit pauline’s Keuken beschamelsaus recipe (dutch). I made this version for this post.
    Béchamel sauce
  • Lasagna with cheese. After the tomato or béchamel sauce layer add some garted cheese. You can also add some cheese on top.

Do you like lasagna? Which is your favourite way to make lasagna?

Tags: ,


18 responses to “Lola’s Kitchen: Lasagna Recipe

  1. Lasagna was like the only dish I ever helped make when I was a kid 😛 The layers were just so fun! My parents always made it with lots of meat, tomato sauce, and cheese though and very little vegetable (mostly just onion or maybe some little bits of other things in the sauce). Nowadays I buy this frozen lasagna from the store that’s vegetarian, so it’s got lots of veggies and tastes like homemade since I heat in the oven. The Bechamel sauce sounds interesting though. I imagine it must taste good with the lasagna!
    Kristen @ Metaphors and Moonlight recently posted…Book Review: House of Kings (House of Royals Book 3) by Keary TaylorMy Profile

    • As a kid lasagna was the only pasta dish I loved. My mom used to make lasagna with ltos of veggies, but I mostly add red bell pepper and onion. That’s nice you have a vegetarian frozen lasagna they sell in your stores, sounds yummy and easy for those days when you don’t want to or don’t have time to cook. I don’t think they something like that here or at least not vegetarian probably.

  2. This looks good and it’s totally different from the way that I make it. I’ve experimented with a few different ingredients but I usually use hamburger, sweet italian sausage, ricotta cheese and a canned sauce because I cannot get my sauce to taste as good as the jarred sauces and some other ingredients. I cook the lasagna noodles and then start layering all the ingredients and bake. Now you’ve made me hungry for lasagna.
    Mary Kirkland recently posted…Favorite Video of the weekMy Profile

    • I never like canned sauces as much as when I make it from scratch. But maybe they have better canned sauces there, the ones here are pretty meh, althoguh adding some ingredients can imporve the taste.
      I never heard of hamburger and sausages in lasagna, do you cut those in pieces and through the sauce or layer them on top of the sauce? And that’s a good idea to cook the lasagna noodles first, that probably lowers the time it has to go in the oven. I also got hungry for lasagna, so I am making it next week!

    • I wonder how your mom makes it. There’s a lot of different ways to make lasagna. If you know how to make a pasta sauce or gravy you can use that as basis and then just layer that with lasagna noodles and cheese and/or béchamel sauce like taste.

    • I like having veggies in my pasta sauces, especially red bell pepper and onion. I also made a pasta sauce with celery last time, which was a nice addition.

    • I only like a little bit of cheese on my lasagna and not on top. In the picture you can see which half is for my boyfriend (with the cheese) and which half for me(without the cheese).

  3. Very interesting, Lola! Quite different than how we made lasagna in the states. We do the noodles, tomato and meat layers but usually there’s ricotta cheese layered in between those and then mozzarella cheese grated on top (and usually mixed in with the other layers as well. I’ve never seen one with the sauce like you did or without cheese on top. Looks yummy though! Glad you found a recipe that suits your tastes 😀
    anna (herding cats & burning soup) recently posted…The Monthly Herd: February. We at least made it to the end.My Profile

    • I never heard of ricotta cheese in lasagna until now. Here Bechamel sauce is pretty normal and I usually prefer wihtout the cheese on top, but only in between thelayers as else the cheese get’s crusty and I don’t like that. I am glad I finally found a recipe that works for me 🙂

Leave a Reply to Wattle Cancel reply

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.